Mortality and medicine: forms of silence and of speech
- Correspondence to: Michael Rowe Yale School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, 205 Whitney Avenue, Suite 306, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; michael.roweyale.edu
- Accepted 21 April 2003
Abstract
Silence can be harmful to patients, their loved ones, and doctors within the contexts of illness and bereavement. I draw from my experience with my son’s illness and death to discuss five forms of silence—the silence around the experience of critical illness; the silence between life and death; the silence of doctors; the silence of the dead, and the silence of the ill—and of speech that may emerge in response to these silences.
